Hewlett-Packard is looking to acquire Autonomy Corp. for $10 billion, a move that would result in HP spinning off its personal computer business, according to Bloomberg.
The news could hit as early as today; HP is expected to report is quarterly earnings at 5pm Eastern.
As the Wall Street Journal noted, HP's PC business dropped 5 percent in the second quarter. The unit, acquired via the Compaq purchase, is a third of HP's quarterly revenue.
The move would come almost a year after HP announced that Léo Apotheker would be the company's new CEO after the somewhat scandalous departure of Mark Hurd. At the time, Apotheker–a veteran of the software industry–pledged to make software more of a focus at HP going forward, though he had few details about how that might play out.
By February, the company announced plans for two new WebOS smartphones - the HP Veer and the Pre 3 - and the HP TouchPad, which came out earlier this summer. It's had a bit of a struggle in the market, however. Best Buy is reportedly sitting on a huge stock of TouchPads, and HP has already discounted the tablet by $100.
In June, meanwhile, HP sued Oracle for allegedly breaching an earlier agreement to support Itanium; the next day Oracle fired back in a press release accusing HP of knowing of Intel's plans to scale back Itanium production months before Oracle did. Ironically, former HP chief Hurd is now Oracle's president.
The news comes about a week after the 30th anniversary of the PC. For more, see PCMag's full coverage, and stay tuned for more details from HP's 5pm earnings call.